Syracuse - From Nothing to National Champ - How a Cross Country Powerhouse Was Built From Scratch in 10 Years

Bobke, according to athletics.net, 112 high school runners were faster than 9:10 in 2016. There were fewer than that in the recruiting years in question for Syracuse's 2015 championship. Having the ability to recruit one let alone multiple runners in the 9:00-9:10 range is a huge advantage. 9:00-9:10 is fast and makes you a top 100 recruit. It's not like Syracuse recruited a bunch of 9:30 guys. I would not be so impressed that "they did it mostly with 9:00-9:10 guys..."

Agree, Wejo sir. To restate my view, I believe recruiting is the most important aspect of building a championship team. You can't win without great recruits. Do you agree? I don't know if cross country recruiting classes are rated like they are in football, but my guess is that if you compared the top 10 NCAA teams they would probably be ranked very high in recruiting quality. I did not mean to take anything away from what the coaches do once they get the recruits. The coaches at Syracuse did a great job with the great athletes that they recruited. I also agree they made a big leap to winning nationals. To say they came out of nowhere is a bit of an overstatement as they finished in the top 15 at NCAAs multiple times and were 5th the year before the championship. Again, cool article. Enjoyed it and admire the team's accomplishment. Just trying to be thoughtfully critical of the article's content.

wejo wrote:

Think of Georgetown, Nova, Providence. All east coast schools with an emphasis on distance and they're not winning NCAAs on the men's side.

A bit off topic, but why qualify "on the men's side"? On the women's side Nova, for example, has won many national championships. I think the last one was 2010. Is there a difference between what a men's team needs to do to win nationals vs. a women's team? If so, I don't know it. If not, then your point is not made by this statement.

Back on topic, the ability to focus on recruiting and offer scholarships makes a big impact. In my view, it's the most important difference. The article should have specifically acknowledged that recruiting is the biggest part of the national championship equation.

Recruiting wrote:

Back on topic, the ability to focus on recruiting and offer scholarships makes a big impact. In my view, it's the most important difference. The article should have specifically acknowledged that recruiting is the biggest part of the national championship equation.

Recruiting gets you top 5 or 10. But there is a reason why Stanford and Oregon aren't just alternating titles. And it is always impressive at the teams that some Ivy leagues recruit and yet are unable to turn into good teams.

The snow is sort of a hit or miss thing. Some people don't mind it (and last I check Syracuse has an indoor track when it is time to do workouts). You just go out, run a bit slower and get the work done. After the first mile or so you don't even notice the cold. There are probably less than a half dozen days where it is a factor (i.e. blizzard where you need to run indoors). Other people just spend months bitching about the weather.

It really is. I was talking to Coogan i think in the last year and he said something along the lines of "Places like Dartmouth and Syracuse are the best places in the country to train for about 9 months out of the year."

I never thought of it but it's true. IT's way too hot in most of the country for distance running for much of the year. The summers in upstate new york are ideal. The only bad months are like January, Feb and March but kids barely go to school in January so it's like two months. If anything, it probably helps prevent them from doing the one thing that really hurts you - burning indoors too hot.

Our pre-season top 10 rankings are on the homepage as well. We have Syracuse at #2.

Sincerely,

Rojo

PS. I loved the piece - an abbreviated web version of Run with the Buffs

PPS. I take credit for their title. I was at Cornell when they got hired and friendly with Fox as he was really nice to my brother when he was up and coming (Fox says he retired when Weldon - a guy he'd never heard of beat him in a road race). Anyways, they came to Cornell for a meet and I incredulously asked Fox and Bell how they'd get someone to come to Syracuse when they could go to Georgetown who was the king of the Big East at the time (I was getting mentally beaten down by Princeton in the Ivy recruiting wars). Pretty sure I ended up in the wall as a doubter as Bell was fired up. A few years later, Georgetown was begging for 2nd in the Big East.

Washington, Cal, Stanford, Colorado, Wisconsin, Oregon, Villanova, Georgetown, Navy, Columbia, Princeton, UPenn, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Furman, Texas, UCLA, NC State, Virginia, Boise State, Oklahoma State, Portland are all schools that get compariable or faster high school talent than Syracuse.

I agree with the posters who have stated that the snow is somewhat overrated. The municipalities in that area invest in snow clearing vehicles because they have no choice otherwise and you don't have to travel very far from Cuse's campus to find roads with little traffic.

It is actually a great area for training. When I lived up there I heard that some college coaches was that Cuse was a sleeping giant. (At that time they spread scholarship money across all T&F event groups.) If you look at Fox's twitter feed, he sometimes posts scenes from workout with the sarcastic hashtag "#crappyvenue".

Of course, it takes top notch coaches and athletes to win a national championship no matter how advantageous the training environment is--and Syracuse is not in the mountainous region of NYS so there's no altitude.

Deathhouse Wogan wrote:

put all of your

--------------------"

Well that's part of it. But I know a person from there. I grew up in the North and know what Winter is about. This person from SY tells me I have no idea what living/training in a "snow belt" is like. Totally different ballgame.

And she's correct. Training in cold isn't that big a deal. Training in almost constant snow has to be a major hassle.

For that reason alone you have to marvel at what has been done there. Getting good kids to put up with Nov-April crap weather is amazing.

i dont know about that. is running in snow really that big of a deal?

is running in snow really that big of a deal?"

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It's not that you're running "in snow". Of course you are trying to avoid that. It's that it never lets up. You are really concerned about a slip. All the time.

The NY snow belt makes much of NE look like Wash., DC (which has mild winters). NE can be tough as well, but it can also be mild... you never know. There is no "lake effect" crap. Which --in NY--means it's snowing even when it shouldn't be.

Recruiting wrote:

Bobke, according to athletics.net, 112 high school runners were faster than 9:10 in 2016. There were fewer than that in the recruiting years in question for Syracuse's 2015 championship. Having the ability to recruit one let alone multiple runners in the 9:00-9:10 range is a huge advantage. 9:00-9:10 is fast and makes you a top 100 recruit. It's not like Syracuse recruited a bunch of 9:30 guys. I would not be so impressed that "they did it mostly with 9:00-9:10 guys..."

and

Recruiting wrote:

You can't win without great recruits. Do you agree? I don't know if cross country recruiting classes are rated like they are in football, but my guess is that if you compared the top 10 NCAA teams they would probably be ranked very high in recruiting quality. I did not mean to take anything away from what the coaches do once they get the recruits.

I agree with the bottom statement but not the top.

Of course you can't win without talent - doesn't matter if it's college or pro. The NOP wasn't getting big time results at all until they got studs. But 9:10 is not a stud. Far from it. When I was coaching in the Ivy League, Princeton had seven sub-9 guys on the team at once .

10 years ago, I had a 9:20 guy (Sage Canaday) get 83rd at NCAAs. Brien Bell congratulated me as he had did some research and there wasn't a slower American in terms of HS pbs ahead of Sage. So basically there were zero 9:20 guys in the top 80 in 2007 - so you'd better be getting 9:00-9:10 guys guys or your not going to be doing much.

But it's a bell curve guy. A top 10 Footlocker guy is probably better than 3 #30 guys at Footlockers. Probably better to get 1 8:50 guy talent than 2 9:05 guys. And we are talking talent - not times.

But let's keep this talk about Syracuse and not turn it into the importance of recruiting.

Recruiting and coaching are not separate aspects: good coaching begets good recruiting and vice versa. Synergy is hard to quantify but it is real.

the entire article was great.

i was most shocked at how big of a talent knight is.

he was running 35 miles per week during xc season as a freshman, 45 as a soph, and 60 as a junior? That's insane.

Great article. Fox did/does an incredible job.

But they do invest all their money to get to this.,

Yet cannot even field a competitive DMR for indoors or a four by mile at Penn.

It is not the same model as Nova or Gtown who have Penn and indoor DMR as a big deal, whether folks think it should be or not, alumni do.

Nova rarely takes a pure 5k type and even Tiernan ran on 4 x mile. They have had two NCAA Champs and 6 track all Americans in same window or close.

Wetmore does essentially same thing as Cuse and is the bench mark for Excellence with that model.

It is a great piece and great success story. They better be good at XC as all the eggs are in one basket. The reality is, very few actually do it the same exact way.at the highest level.

So they run 35-60 miles per week? Or is that just Knight? Either way, someone should give Knight a luckiest boy in North America Award. Some people have to work hard to get where they are.

This response is amazing. It is a pitch perfect example of the type of antiquated thinking Syracuse has used to bypass their east coast peer groups. Syracuse has won a NCAA title, won 16 conference and regional cross titles, been top 10 in track, won an ACC track title, have had multiple hurdlers either win, runner-up or score at nationals and you're comparing that success to a relay meet in April? Its like a college basketball coach bragging their team won the holiday classic though they get bounced from the NCAA tournament in the first round, if they even happen to make it.

There is no coach in the country that would trade Syracuse's success the last decade the "success" you describe above.

This was a really well done piece. As a runner on teams at SU in the 90s, the thought of the program winning a Big East title seemed like a pipe dream. Our group believed that the program had potential because of the distance running talent in the Northeast, but it was hard to imagine people not going to PC/Nova/Gtown if given the option.

It's not just about having the scholarships to offer, it's convincing talent to take a chance on a program that didn't have recent history. The earlier guys took a bit of a chance to come to the Cuse and trust what was being built. It was nice to see them acknowledged as their work paved the way for that title team.

I never said winning at Penn was more important than anything. I

Said it was a matter of focus.

Syracuse for all their amazing results does not put any money into 800/ miler types

Nova and Georgetown do. That's just the facts and both have had multiple AA combined.it's just a different focus.Villanova is never giving a full ride to a 905 guy and hope he develops into a number 4 or 5 on their xc team and may be a decent 5k runner.

And at least be honest you can be tenth at NCAA track with one doubling athlete or two people

Of course there are many intangibles to a Runner as well. The late Pat Porter was only a 4:29 miler in high school barely broke 10 minutes 3200 8 national titles. Trust me I was there the dude was a beast!!

Is there anything in print about the training that they do?